Current electronic payment for online transactions generally include payments and refunds.
For buyers, electronic payment generally involves advance payment actions. For example, upon purchasing a product online, the buyer makes a payment to a trading server in advance. After receiving the product shipped by the seller, the buyer sends a delivery confirmation to the trading server, which forwards the payment to the seller.
In comparison, electronic refund generally involves back payment actions. For example, if the buyer wants a refund after having received the purchased product, the buyer submits a request for refund and returns the product to the seller. Upon receiving the returned product from the buyer, if the seller accepts the refund request, the seller sends a message to the trading server to confirm the refund, and the trading server then refunds the buyer by making an equivalent payment, or by reversing the original payment. On some popular online trading platforms, to make a refund, the trading server returns, from a system account to the buyer, the payment made in advance by the buyer and temporarily stored in the system account.
In the above described refund process, because the seller must first receive the returned product before accepting the refund request, a delay is caused by return shipping. As a result, buyers frequently inquire their accounts to check the status of the refund. This results in frequent refreshing of the user account information, and causes an increased burden on the system's processing resources.